Buck shots

The Orioles gave up 11 runs tonight. They had allowed 11 runs combined in their last four games.

Robert Andino is the first Oriole to homer in consecutive games since Luke Scott on July 23-24 against Minnesota.

Andino is batting .364 in his last five games, with three doubles and two homers.

Manager Buck Showalter didn’t talk about any of that, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

So why wasn’t Jeremy Guthrie as effective tonight?

“A lot of deep counts,” Showalter said. “That’s something a good lineup does. Just had to work for everything. They made him work.”

I mentioned earlier that Nolan Reimold had trouble picking up the ball in left field.

“We weren’t clean getting them out of there,” Showalter said. “There’s a fine margin of error at the major league level with the foot speed, and the game speeds up. Plays have to be made clean and we didn’t make them tonight. Something we’ve got to do a little bit better. It’s one of those things that doesn’t show up in the error column.”

Showalter was looking to use Rick VandenHurk tonight so the right-hander could get in some work before starting in Boston next week. I assume that VandenHurk will pitch Wednesday’s game, but Showalter keeps saying it could be Tuesday or Wednesday.

“We needed to get him in,” Showalter said. “He had four days off. His day to throw and as long as the situation presented itself, he was going to pitch tonight. He’ll probably fit in on Tuesday or Wednesday, like I said earlier. But that was by design tonight.”